One name kept coming up. Ellen Thomas said “Homer Groening”. Will Vinton said “Homer Groening”. Tim Smith said “Homer Groening.” Bill Plympton said “Homer Groening”. What was the question?  Dennis and I were asking them who we should know about in Portland film history.

From the Seattle Times obituary for Groening, in 1996.

Homer P. Groening was born Dec. 30, 1919, a U.S. citizen in Main Centre, Saskatchewan, the son of Mennonite farmers. He spent his youth in Oregon.

He earned the rank of Eagle Scout and was a co-founder in 1936 of Camp Pioneer at the base of Mount Jefferson. He graduated from Linfield College in McMinnville, Ore., in 1941.

He met his wife, Margaret, at Linfield. They married in 1942.

Mr. Groening flew a B-17 over Europe during World War II and participated in the D-Day invasion, winning a Distinguished Flying Cross.

After the war, he returned to Portland and joined the Botsford, Constantine and Gardner ad agency as a production assistant.

He was called up again to fly transport planes in Korea.

Upon his return, he became a vice president at the ad agency, working on accounts such as Jantzen, Pendleton, Olympia beer, Idaho potatoes and Western Hotels. He started his own agency in 1958.

“He was an absolute creative genius,” said former Advertising Federation President Mick Scott, who worked with Mr. Groening to found the American Advertising Museum in Portland.

When film caught his interest, he taught himself the craft.

“He was a one-man show,” said his daughter, Lisa. “He did the producing, writing, shooting, sound recording, editing, directing and narrating.”

Among his film clients were Jantzen, Timberline Lodge, Johnson Motors, Eastman Kodak and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.

He won numerous Golden Eagles, given by the Council on International Non-Theatrical Events (CINE), and awards from the Advertising Association of the West and the American Film Festival.

He produced a string of films about water in all its forms, including “Get Wet,” “Getting Wetter,” “Psychedelic Wet” and “Study in Wet.”

Mr. Groening’s son, Matt, said he received creative encouragement at home, in part because his father was a cartoonist himself. Mr. Groening took colored pencils and sketch pads home to his five children. He would make up the beginning of a story and his children would finish it.

When young Will Vinton stood in Portland with his brand new Oscar in 1975, wondering if he should stick around, he took a page from Homer Groening, and decided to stay.

One consequence of that decision…..

Travis Knight and Mark Gustafson next month will be in LA nervously waiting for the moment they open the envelope for Best Animated Feature. Both artists are former Will Vinton Studio employees, mentored by Will, who was mentored by Homer.

Learn more about Oregon’s rich animation and cartooning history at the first public meeting of the Oregon Cartoon Institute, Feb. 25 at 7:00 PM. Location: 13 NW 13th, first floor of Ackerman Films, in Portland, Oregon.

In 1959, Oregon asked Portland filmmaker and adman Homer Groening to orchestrate the statewide celebration of the centennial of statehood. One teenager who remembers being hired by Groening to hand out brochures for the celebration grew up to be the poet Barbara Drake. In the picture above, she is the first on the right.

In the picture below, she’s the one smack dab in the middle.

Barbara Drake’s most recent book of poetry, Driving One Hundred, was published in 2009 by Windfall Press. Other books of poetry include What We Say to Strangers, Love at the Egyptian Theatre, Life in a Gothic Novel, Bees in Wet Weather, and Small Favors. She is also the author of Writing Poetry, widely used as a college textbook, and Peace at Heart: an Oregon Country Life, a memoir, which was an Oregon Book Award finalist in 1999. Born in Kansas, she moved with her parents to Oregon as a small child and grew up in Coos Bay. She earned her B.A. and M.F.A. degrees from the University of Oregon, and subsequently lived in Michigan for sixteen years where she taught at Michigan State University before returning to Oregon to teach at Linfield College, from 1983 until her recent retirement. The author and her husband live on a small farm in the foothills of the Oregon Coast Range.

From the bio of Drake on the Mountain Writers website.

Maybe Oregon artists are especially good at passing their gifts down to their children. Homer Groening’s son Matt followed him into show business, while Barbara Drake’s daughter Monica followed her into literature.

Barbara has another connection to Oregon film. She told me  she loved animated films so much that once she took a class at Northwest Film Center so she could make one of her own. She shot her drawings in sequence, just as instructed,  and took the film to be developed. Unfortunately she forgot to tell the lab to print each frame 12 times. When she got the film back the images flew past so fast no human eye could decipher them.

I suppose Barbara’s film is still there, waiting to be seen by super gifted people in the future who can see  images that pass really, really fast. That was her only attempt at filmmaking, and she was philosophical about it. Maybe she turned it into a poem.

First version of America’s most beloved nuclear family, The Simpsons, as unveiled on The Traci Ullman Show.

The Simpsons eventually became movie stars, but for two decades they labored away on the small screen. You may have heard of them.

Matt Groening, their Portland born and raised creator, is second generation show biz — Homer Groening, his father, was an independent filmmaker and advertising man in Portland. Abraham Groening, his grandfather, was a professor at Lewis and Clark College.

I hereby claim everything ever made starring Bart, Maggie, Lisa, Homer and Marge Simpson as an Oregon film, based on the Oregon origin of their creator, Lincoln High School alumnus Matt Groening.

This post brought to you by the Oregon Cartoon Institute, your source for Oregon animation and cartooning history since 2003.

Tim Smith and Matt Groening made films in high school- first working together, as in Drugs: Killer or Dillers, before Tim Smith began working on his own, as in The Case of the Kitchen Killer.

Tim worked as a sound editor on feature films here in Portland, and later in New York and LA, before retiring from the film biz.